


A Kiss So Sweet And Deadly

by Arhtea



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, Detective Noir, Domestic Violence, F/M, Gen, Infidelity, Murder, Pregnancy, Revenge, Suicide, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:02:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23826541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arhtea/pseuds/Arhtea
Summary: Severus Snape has been getting by, earning a lousy living as a private detective when one day Lily Potter, the girl he never could forget, shows up at his door asking for help. Unable to send her away, Snape soon finds himself implicated in more than one murder with an angry auror on his trail.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Lily Evans Potter/Severus Snape
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21
Collections: Snape Bigbang 2019





	A Kiss So Sweet And Deadly

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this fic was like trying to build Frankenstein's monster with the available parts being 17 toes, 1 ear and 3 legs that were all of differing lengths, so if you discovered a plot-hole or a toe were a nose was supposed to go...sorry. 
> 
> It is heavily AU although still the wizarding world. But characters have been torn out of their time a little at certain places. Otherwise takes place around 10 years since Snape graduated but some other characters might show up outside their time.

_Of all the dingy little offices in Greywater Alley, this dame just had to walk into mine. A somewhat lesser surprise though when you consider that there was not a snowball’s chance in hell she’d dirty her shoes on that street for any other house than mine. And even then only if she was properly desperate. Either way, there she stood, my Lily. Although she hadn’t been my Lily for a long while now. She was someone else’s._

_But, damn, could she still leave me breathless. It had been at least three years since I last laid eyes on her and she certainly had changed. Being Potter’s wife seemed to suit her, for she looked perfect. Every lock of red hair was pinned in place with pearls and she was dressed in those expensive black robes that most pure-bloods would have considered borderline indecent. They were tailored to the latest fashion and hugged her curves leaving very little to the imagination, just as I recalled she was back then. Not that Lily let me look a whole lot. We weren’t even an item although we could have been. If she had chosen me back at Hogwarts._

“ _May I sit down?” she asked, her voice, exactly as sweet and as enchanting as I remembered. When I didn’t reply immediately, she bit her blood red lip and I saw it tremble slightly._

_I fantasized about her coming back to me. In truth, I don’t think I believed at first that she had truly chosen Potter over me. I kept waiting for her to come to her senses and leave him. But she never came back. She had made her choice. And all I had left were the stupid dreams of her begging me to take her back. And yet here she was._

_Only, unlike in the fantasy, Lily Potter wasn’t begging. She was standing at my door, her face obscured by a veil. And much worse, unlike in my dreams, I knew I’d never find the strength to turn her away._

_We stared at each other for a good long while before I slowly nodded towards the lumpy armchair opposite my desk. I had questions of course, but what I settled for was simply: “Talk!”_

_She didn’t. Not right away. Instead she fished out a small golden cigarette case and picked out one of the slim white rolls. She lifted it to those enticingly red lips and cocked her head to one side._ “ _Do you have a light?”_

_I held out my lighter for her and she leaned in close, the sweet scent of her perfume wafting over me. Lilies. Of course. I pulled away from her as soon as she got her cigarette lit and I could have sworn I saw a small pout on her lips. Then she took a drag of the cigarette and slowly blew out the smoke._

_Finally she sat down, crossed her legs so that the robes shifted upwards slightly and flashed a bit of her delicate white ankles, lifted up the veil and removed the large sunglasses. My first thought was horror at the sight. The bruise covered the entire one side of her face, her left eye almost swollen shut. My second thought was vicious satisfaction. She had chosen Potter over me, over my objections and warnings, and it felt good to see I’d been vindicated. Felt better than I wanted to admit to myself. Then I flipped open my notebook, picked up a fountain pen and just waited for her to begin._

_After a second, she did: “I need your help, Severus!”_

That was forty-eight hours ago. Forty-eight hours before I woke up in a pool of somebody else’s blood, feeling like my head had been split open, with a body lying next to me and Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody, the horror story of the Auror department, glaring down at me with homicidal intent gleaming in his one good eye.

* * *

I guess I ought to start a little bit before the point in time where little miss heartthrob walked into my office. I’d not been having the best week for one. Or the best decade really. Truth be told, I’d drunk most of it away. But a good drink takes money and for that matter, so does the ghastly cheap stuff. After I’d drank away all of my measly inheritance, that is to say, a week after dear mum’s funeral, I needed a job. Except that people weren’t really lining up to hire men like me because of...well, a row of things that were only partially my fault. To wrap up a long backstory with a neat bow, now I’m chasing down cheating cats and lost spouses. Or sometimes the other way around. 

That’s what Lily came to me with that night. The story was pretty standard. Her husband was cheating and when she confronted him about it, dear James Potter, the gentleman that he is, beat her to a pulp. I’d heard it before at least a dozen times. Usually they wanted proof after that. Something that they could leverage against their husbands. See, knocking your wife about every few weeks or so doesn’t really raise waves around here, not when there are a million ways to hide bruises. But a cheating scandal will ruin a pure-blood’s name and for a pure-blood, name can be everything. Can’t lord their superior blood above the rest of us, when your offspring goes around screwing anything and everything that has a pulse. 

So I thought Lily would want some nice colour photographs of her husband and Jewel, the lover with the apt nickname, and that would be it. Two families would deal with it internally to escape the public shame, probably with the muggle-born getting a hefty pay off and a warning to keep her damn mouth shut and herself away from other people’s husbands. 

Only Lily never did things the way that other people did things. She wanted me to get her the hell out of there. Those were her words. “Sev, he’ll kill me if I stay. I know it. I want to get out.” Turns out, she was pregnant with his child and she didn’t want anything to happen to the kid. She also didn’t want Potter to divorce her and keep the kid. They do that a lot too. Pure-bloods still have enough power to make sure a lowly mudblood upstart does not get anywhere too far above her station. She might have married one of the sacred twenty-eight, but inside she was still inferior to all of them. It’s a lesson both of us had had to learn in different ways.

I wanted to say no. I really did. But I was broke as usual, she had a rich husband, last night’s firewhisky still sloshed around in my brain and damn it, the thought of her actually owing me for something was far too much to just throw away. So when she was done with her story, I closed up the notebook and I promised I’d see what I could do for her.

* * *

She’d said that her husband liked to frequent a certain club named Secret Kisses two streets from Knockturn Alley. It was a seedy enough place where low-born witches did things even muggles considered indecent but it was definitely discreet as long as you spared the manager enough coin. And that is where Jewel danced before they slipped away for their illicit meetings every Friday. I knew about the club although I was a tad surprised that so did Lily. Either way, it was as good a place to start as any. 

Only problem was that I wasn’t exactly welcome there. It had been a good eight years since I accidentally brought an Auror raid down on the place and...well, things had been quite chilly since. Even worse, the club owner, one Dionysus Black, was rumoured to have lately gotten an offer from Voldemort that he couldn’t turn down. And even if Dionysus Black had somehow decided to forgive and forget, I was _definitely_ on _Voldemort’s_ shit list.

On top of that, disguised even as Jonathan Harker, an alter identity I used for jobs where I didn’t want to use my real name, in Secret Kisses photography or any other method of creating evidence that would be admissible in court was a hard no. Master Black had a nasty habit of breaking off bits of people that chose to not follow that rule. I had grown quite proficient with a camera but I was still uneasy as I slipped a few coins into the bouncer’s hand and then walked down into the club.

On Friday night, the night James Potter favoured, the club was full. A mix of pop and rock drummed through the room, making the walls shake. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and hard to breathe. The dancers were shaking their hips on the tables, their clothes a creative combination of robes and lingerie, as the so called “respectable” wizards placed piles of coins at their feet or overindulged on tobacco, overpriced firewhisky or even some less than legal potions. I had once played with the idea of a career in that sort of potion making. It was lucrative but of course after Voldemort gets angry at you, the kind of criminal underbelly that is willing to deal with you are the _truly_ unsavoury. 

I tried not to stare at anyone too hard for fear that they’d recognize me. It was bad enough that I had to wear a false beard for fear that any magical disguises would be seen through, The damn thing itched badly and the prospective humiliation of being caught in muggle disguise was mortifying. That being said, it did prove to be enough to distort my features so that no one questioned me. 

After some time and consideration I picked a table at the back and settled in. This wasn’t my kind of place but there was nothing else left to do but wait. At least my cheap attire kept the girls from coming too close. They were happy enough flirting with men they considered worth their time. Both the bartender and the bouncer did send me a few glares, but as long as they weren’t going to be looking too close, I figured I’d be fine. 

And then James Potter never showed up. Jewel did. The man in the ill-fitting ring master’s outfit announced her and I had to agree that Potter had taste, what little I could see of her in the dim light. The corset and feathers made her look like a bird although her dancing skills were a little disappointing. But then again, I conceded, as I watched her stumble in those neck-breaking heels, the dancing skills were not what men were most interested in anyway.

When her dance ended, I waited but no men approached her. None tried to slip behind the curtain and head to her dressing room. Instead, another dancer took her place, displaying quite a bit more grace and making it a struggle to watch the right door. I ended up waiting for two more hours and had to finally invest in a second drink to make sure that I wasn’t thrown out. I was about to call it a night and go home, when a woman in a short black dress and white apron came up to me, carrying a tray. 

“Can I help you?” she asked cheerily, her brown curls bouncing on her shoulders.

I was tempted to say no and walk away but then it struck me that getting caught up in my worry of being recognized, I had failed to do any actual investigating. I tried a smile on her. “Yeah, I saw Jewel on the stage tonight. Is she going to dance again before the night is over?” I asked.

“No, she had only one show tonight. Can’t I help?” she asked, her lips curving in a cute pout.

“Maybe,” I replied, doing my best to appear charming, “But I really wanted to see more of her. You know, let her know how much I appreciated it. Maybe send her some flowers?” I slipped a coin across the table with my empty glass. It was a coin toss whether she’d call the guards over or not but I was willing to risk it. 

She glanced at the sickle, her eyes narrowing, before slipping it in her apron. “You can check dressing room number 7,” she finally replied, her voice a tiny bit hesitant, “Wait until the next number starts, Caleb,” she shrugged towards the guard, “He will be staring at Gala!” Before I could thank her, she was taking my glass and moving gracefully away.

Five minutes later the lights dimmed and I could understand why Caleb only had eyes for the stage. The woman had long blonde hair down to her waist and little else but strings of pearls covering her. She moved like she had been born for this and it took me a good minute before I could pick my jaw up from the floor and slip behind the black curtain separating the dressing rooms from the club. The same doorway I had been keeping an eye on all night. 

I walked through the narrow hallway with doors on either side. The club looked quite a bit shabbier on this side, I noted with grim satisfaction. The floor was covered with a cheap and filthy grey carpet and the doors had faded blue paint peeling off them in chunks. Each number was different - some drawn on with careless strokes, one a piece of paper pinned on it and one heavy gold seven on the door that almost looked decent.

I stopped at the door, feeling a certain cold sensation creep up my spine, before I pushed it open in one smooth motion. The room was empty but only because the dancer was dead and when they’re dead, they’re just furniture. For a moment I just stood and stared. It wasn’t my first dead body. A private investigator’s professional hazard is people dropping around them like flies. But at the same time I can’t really say that I had seen too many in my time and...well, for a while back in my youth I thought that I could stomach death but death is different up close. Much harder to ignore. 

She was young, as were all the dancers in Secret Kisses. Pretty little thing too, long blonde hair and something regal about her face. She wore a combination of a corset and a robe, with a long slit that revealed fishnets and impossibly high heels, again, the uniform of that club. Nothing a good little rich girl would have been caught dead in. 

I took a step closer although my senses were telling me to run. It was Jewel. I had only seen her in the dim light on the stage but she had the same hairstyle. I bent down after a brief inner battle, trying to ignore the perfume that wafted over me, far too much and far too sweet...and something else I couldn’t quite place. Something that felt, rather than smelled, familiar. 

From under her diamond-studded choker I could see ligature marks. Strangled. With something thin and wiry by the looks of it. I moved to stand when I noticed the faint line. She was wearing a blond wig. 

“Jewel?” 

The voice was so familiar that it startled me and I leapt to my feet. The person knocked loudly and I shuffled quickly behind a screen. The door banged open as James Potter all but shouted: “Jewel, are you okay?” Then he must have seen the body because I heard the sound of something crashing. “Jewel?” he demanded, voice breaking with urgency and fear. Something slapped against the floor. 

“Oh, Merlin,” he whispered just as I noticed the light from the door that must have certainly illuminated my form behind the screen. I took a step back and knocked into a coat hanger. It clanged against the wall. 

“Hello? Who’s there? I’m armed!” James Potter called out. 

I braced myself in case the place had wards and apparated away with a loud crack.

I apparated twice more before I finally felt secure enough that I hadn’t been followed. I didn’t really think that James Potter had the presence of mind for it but I had underestimated him on a couple of previous occasions and to my great shame none of them had worked out in my favor. Finally though, as I slumped against the wall in an alley near Spinner’s End, I felt my heart stop beating. Another twenty minutes walking around the block back and forth and I felt safe enough to go home.

By then I’d also had plenty of time to think and none of the conclusions I reached were in any way, shape or form good ones. There was always a chance that Jewel had been killed by another jealous lover and it had nothing to do with Potter. She looked pretty enough to turn men mad like that. That was the good scenario. Well, that and the hope I hadn’t left too many of my prints behind. 

The bad scenario was where they Aurors pinned me for her murder and that this was all some sort of a set up. And I knew I had to get in touch with Lily.

* * *

Lily didn’t like me calling her the next morning but she reluctantly agreed to come over later. I spent the next couple of hours tapping my fingers on the table and trying to focus. When she did finally show up, this time not in the office but in my home, she looked a mess, in the same kind of expensive robes but this time red and gold, probably Potter’s favourites but her hair was loose and her eyes, when she lifted the veil, looked like she’d been crying.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered as soon as I opened the door and let her in. “I shouldn’t have been so harsh on the phone but I’ve had a rough morning!”

“What happened?” I asked, forgetting for a second how rough my own night had been.

She shook her head, landed dramatically on my lumpy couch and sighed. “A girl from our year in Hogwarts was found dead. Josie Daniels. Did you know that was her real name? My husband was sleeping with a muggleborn from Hufflepuff. I don’t know if you remember her?” 

I didn’t, actually. Hufflepuffs weren’t real high on my radar back then. Well, Hufflepuffs weren’t high on _anybody’s_ radar ever. Lily didn’t wait for me to answer though. She dabbed at her eyes and fixed up her hair. “James found her. It was absolutely ghastly. The Aurors questioned us all night. He didn’t give anything away about the affair though, he seemed to have an answer for everything.” 

“Where was she found?” I asked, although I knew already. 

Lily shook her head. “At that damn _club_. What happened? Weren’t you supposed to go there last night?” 

“I did,” I replied, “but your husband didn’t show up so I left quietly.”

Lily sent me a glance but then fanned herself with her hand. “Sorry, sorry. I’ve just been so anxious about it all.” 

“Did Potter at least give a reason why he was there?” I prodded. If the man had given anything away, that might give Lily leverage in a divorce. 

Lily shook her head. “He simply said that he’d been forced there by some people he was doing business with and he couldn’t say no. You of all people know how he is,” she pursed her lips and sent me a glance.

I turned away. I did know how Potter was. He had that way about him that anyone who wasn’t a Slytherin wanted to believe him. He was also Dumbledore’s golden boy even though so far in the fight against Voldemort’s crime syndicate he had been absolutely useless. But the old fool was miraculously still alive and even more miraculously still supporting the Potters. Perhaps because if James had one good quality, it was that he had a lot of gold in Gringotts and he was ready to fuel it into that ridiculous order. 

I nodded and after a moment asked: “Do you think there is any proof we can get of the affair, now that she is dead?” 

Lily shrugged. “I don’t know. It did shake him. Maybe they have some mementos, letters. Maybe she kept something of his,” She sat up to look at me. “It is all so horrible, Severus. And then when the Aurors left…”

She took a breath and I arched an eyebrow. Then she slowly pulled back her sleeves and revealed her wrists. The marks weren’t too bad but the implication of why James Potter had felt the need to pin his wife down so hard that he left marks was enough to send a shiver of rage through me. 

“He did that?” I asked and she nodded, tears springing from her eyes again.

“You need to get away, Lily,” I said softly. She jumped up from the couch and ran to me. 

“I’m sorry, Severus. I’m so sorry,” she whispered. Then her arms were around my neck and she was softly sobbing into my chest. “I’m sorry, I should have listened,” she whispered and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that yes, she should have.

Instead I slowly rubbed circles on her back. “Look, calm down. It’ll be alright. I promise, it’ll be alright. We’ll figure something out!” I took her head in my hands and tried to smile at her. “Look, I’ll figure something out. I’ll get you letters or jewellery, there has to be some proof of the affair.” 

She looked at me then, her eyelashes shimmering with tears and her lip trembling. Without thinking, I leaned forward or maybe she reached up towards me but then I felt her lips. They were soft and smooth and she broke away only after a few seconds, her face crimson, but for a moment I could not breathe. She looked away. “I...I’m sorry, Severus. I shouldn’t have.” 

I raised a hand to comfort her but stopped midway. “It’s alright, Lily,” was all I could say, “I will help you. I promise!” She nodded, turned her head back and suddenly placed a kiss on my cheek, before blushing even more deeply, grabbing her purse and hurrying out the door.

I took a step after her but she was already gone with the crack of apparition following her and as I yanked the front door open, I saw something else coming at me from the end of the street.

* * *

It is a universal rule that police officers and private investigators don’t get along but Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody was a special case. He was a legend in the auror department. He also really didn’t like me. Moody’s problem was that for one he was on Dumbledore’s side and for two he was far too suspicious for his own good. Granted, some of his suspicions, like the fact that I was aspiring to get a job in Voldemort’s syndicate of crime, were correct. The trouble is, he never stopped suspecting me. 

He also was known to only take cases that were of special interest to him. I felt a cold fear creep up my throat as our eyes met. And he wasn’t alone. He had Kingsely Shacklebolt with him. Once he’d seen me, there was no point in closing the door again, so I just stood and waited until they walked up the path and Moody sent me what might have passed for his courteous glare. “We need a word, Snape.” 

I leaned against the door frame, carefully keeping my hand away from my wand. There was no need to make him think I was about to do something stupid. “Yeah? About what?” 

“Let’s do this inside, shall we?” 

He wasn’t smooth about it, he just wanted an excuse to snoop around inside the house. No one in Spinner’s End was going to think less of me seeing a couple of cops ask questions. Here you were more suspicious if you’d never been in trouble with the law. but I didn’t really want to come off right off the bat as if I was hiding something so after a silence just long enough to indicate I certainly wasn’t _happy_ about it, I stepped away from the door, letting them in.  
They made their way to the living room but did not sit so I didn’t either. Instead I closed the door and leaned against the wall. “Alright, you are inside. What can I do for you?” 

Moody’s glare had lost some of it’s forced courteousness. “We found a dead body yesterday. In a club named Secret Kisses. She was a dancer there. Have you ever been to that club?” 

My hands threatened to clench into fists. They had come to me way too soon. How could they have known? James Potter didn’t see anything and I was fairly certain that if Cygnus Black had found out I’d been in his club, it wouldn’t be Aurors at my door. In the end I gave a shrug. “I know of it. I’m not welcome there lately, though. You might have heard of my troubles with...mister Black,” 

“Yes, I do remember. You have a habit of getting into trouble, don’t you?” Moody asked.

I narrowed my eyes at him. I hadn’t had a quarrel with the Aurors in years. Only trouble I gave them was when another cheating spouse tried to complain about me, only to find out that what I’d done was completely within the bounds of the law. No charges were ever filed and the worst I ever got was a wand at my throat and a friendly suggestion to stay the hell away from their cases. 

“Hogwarts was a long time ago,” I replied shortly.

“Yeah? Was it? And what about Voldemort? He was a long time ago as well?” 

I resisted the urge to snarl at him. Voldemort was a long time ago as well. He knew that. Off the top of my head I couldn’t honestly name anyone who _didn’t_ know about me and my unsuccessful attempt to join Voldemort’s little crime syndicate of running weapons, girls, drugs and blackmailing people. But if he knew that I’d tried to join, he also knew how I screwed that up.

“Voldemort has made it clear in not so many words that if I so much as sell an illicit potion in this town, I’m a dead man,” _As you well know, sir._

Moody didn’t look convinced. He glanced down at his notebook and then at me. “A lot could have changed since.”  
“Yeah, cause Voldemort strikes you as the forgiving type,” I snarled, then pressed my nails into my palms and tried to focus. He’d probably want nothing more than haul my ass into the ministry and grill me for a nice long while. “As to your question, I haven’t been to the club in years. Now what is this about?”

Moody looked suspicious but didn’t press the question. Instead he extended a photograph. “You know this girl?”

I made a show of glancing at the photograph. Not looking would have been worse. Then I shook my head. “No. You might have noticed I’m not a real hit with the ladies. And if she went into that club, I probably couldn’t afford her anyway. Why are you asking about her?” 

“She’s dead.” It was the first words Kingsley spoke to me and I turned my head. 

“Is that so? Shame. She looks young.”

“You don’t sound too broken up about it,” Moody remarked. 

I shrugged in response then after a second added: “I didn’t know her.”

“She was in Hogwarts with you,” 

I smirked humourlessly. “Yeah, I was busy during that time, I had a lot on my mind,” 

“Like licking Lucius Malfoy’s boots?” 

“Like trying to survive James Potter and his cronies. Are we done here? Because it feels like we are done!” 

Moody regarded me for a long time. “I don’t suppose you’d want to let us take a look around?” 

I did flash my teeth this time and he nodded. “In that case we are done. But don’t leave town, Snape. We will be talking with you again!” 

I didn’t bother replying. I had a more burning question on my mind - how did they know to come to my door by the next morning already?

* * *

After a good think, I decided it wasn’t all bad. Certainly, there was a dead girl. There was also a wife who needed a way out of a marriage and a husband who had, no doubt, been caught in a compromising position. I was not about to hope that this would be enough to put a dent into James Potter’s reputation but it was as good a place as any to start. If I managed to find some sort of a connection between her and Potter, it might force his hand into signing divorce papers. 

The thing that troubled me, though, was that the girl had died the night I was supposed to be watching. In the room I was supposed to be worrying about. And what’s more, the coppers were at my door like magic. I knew I hadn’t left a trail at the club. If they had recognized me at the club, I would have had far more to worry about.

In fact, now I was worried, because if this was going to leak from the auror department, and that particular department was a fucking sieve with a hole punched in the center, that was not going to be good for my health in any way. Nevertheless, I could not disappear from that investigation just yet. Besides, I felt a bit of pity for Josie. I hadn’t known her, but it still felt wrong that she would be killed like that. I mean, first to have to be Potter’s lover and then get choked to death for her trouble.

Could Potter have done it? He seemed out of sorts, but he could have just come back to make a show of finding her there, to absolve himself of the guilt. Certainly if he had put his hands around her neck and choked her out, that would get Lily her divorce. And no one would blame her for dropping him like a sack of moldy potatoes. 

I won’t lie, that I started the investigation more to save my own skin and of the hope that it would end up coming back to bite Potter, rather than of pity for the girl. But nevertheless, I started that investigation. I figured I needed to know more about the dead girl. Even if I didn’t get information about the murder, perhaps there were witnesses at least to an affair. The last thing Potter would want would be his wife threatening him with pictures of him and a dead girl.

At daylight Secret Kisses didn’t look like much. It was in fact sort of run down and sort of sad. The girl shaking her hips on the stage certainly wasn’t one of Black’s finest and she barely had an audience anyway. However, I got lucky about one thing. The brunette from last night was there. I was afraid she’d recognize me. Or rather recognize Harker, but I had changed my clothes and my hair and she didn’t seem to notice. I could only guess that in the light of day I looked different too. 

She wasn’t willing to chat at first but after a bit finally sat down, when I opened my wallet and slipped her a few more coins. She looked reluctant still but silver was silver. 

“So what can I help you with?” she asked, after introducing herself as Jessie and slipping into the chair next to me. 

“I want to know about the girl who got killed last night.”

“You an auror or something? They already came around asking all sorts of questions.” 

“Sort of,” I conceded. “And I’d like to hear about her!”

Jessie regarded me for a while, chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip.

“Hear what?” 

“She had a man in her life?” 

“The aurors asked about that too.”

“Yeah? What did you tell them?”

“That she didn’t,” she answered but her eyes glinted mischievously.

I arched an eyebrow. “And was that the truth?” 

She contemplated the answer and I slipped another coin across the table.

Jessie rolled her eyes and pocketed it. Then she leaned forward conspiratorially. “Jewel got herself a rich man. He brought her all kinds of jewellery.” She laughed loudly at the poor joke.

“Is that so?” I asked, trying to hide my eagerness. “You know, who it was?” 

She tugged on a lock of her brunette hair and then shook her head. “No. She kept it real close to the chest. The way we all figured, maybe he was from a good family or had a wife back home. But the way I figure, if he was hanging around here, his wife couldn’t have been anything special, you know?”

I was surprised at how angry that comment made me, for just a split second. Angry at what? Lily’s honour? I wanted to argue with her. Wanted to defend Lily… But that was the wrong thing to do if I wanted info, so I took a sip of my lukewarm butterbeer. She misread it as interest and leaned even further towards me, so I could smell her floral perfume.

“I heard from Cass that she once even showed up here. Was a real bombshell. You’d think she could keep her man interested. Instead he went to find a near identical lover for himself. Go figure!” 

After a second, I could trust my voice to say: “I guess so. Anything else you know about him?”

“Why? You think he was in on it or something? You think he did it?” Jessie’s round brown eyes turned as big as saucers. 

I tried to seem nonchalant. “Maybe. So?”

She shrugged and I could see she wasn’t going to give me anything more. “Not really. Except he must have been something else, you know? We all noticed how she acted. Especially last night. She danced real clumsy that night. I asked her if she was in love or something, never seen Jewel that distracted.” 

A shout echoed from the back rooms and Jessie leapt up. “And now I have to go. Take care now, mister not-an-auror!” She gave me a wink and again disappeared so fast I had no chance to react.

The rest of my day passed uneventfully. I questioned two more girls and neither knew anything beyond some facts about Potter’s prowess in bed that I could have gone without knowing. I knew from past experiences that the club had no security cameras and there was no point in trying to smooth talk their security. The wizards had just enough brain cells to be able to cast stupefy and expelliarmus and tie all the troublemakers up. They also had muscles big enough that if they could not remember any spells, they could fuck you up the old fashioned way. I swear, way back when I was still welcome at the club, I’d seen one of Black’s men take three stupefys in the chest without so much as stumbling in his step. But trying to con them only made them suspicious and you get very hurt. 

Instead, I dug out a bunch of newspapers I could find and then scanned the society pages. I don’t know what I was looking for. Surely if some scandal surrounding the Potters had been already published, I would have seen it. The Daily Prophet kept it all very above board anyway, nothing that wasn’t explicitly confirmed. A bunch of parties they attended together. Potter getting some award, standing next to Dumbledore, the old man looking like a proud father. Lily throwing some sort of a gala. Charity maybe? There was a stunning photo of her and some blond woman. The name under it was Regina Travers, one of the old pureblood families. She had her arm around Lily’s waist and it sort of stung how well she’d seemed to have been accepted by the elite. Still, I couldn't help myself. Lily looked stunning in that photo. I slipped the page with the picture into my pocket and then put the newspaper away, trying not to be bitter. 

Quibbler though, that was the gold mine. They published damn near anything if you told the story with enough enthusiasm. There was plenty about the Potters. All useless. James Potter has been spotted hunting Bigfoot. Do James and Lily Potter keep stolen muggleborn children as slaves? Is Lily Potter’s and Regina Travers’s charitable foundation just a front to smuggle toxic mold to Ireland? I fell asleep to the words of the article that described the effects of a bright pink fungus that could be used to manipulate voters during elections.

* * *

I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing. It had been a while since I’d heard that. I kept it more out of a certain unwillingness to change than any necessity. And as a reminder of who I was. No one else was going to forget my roots, I couldn’t afford to do it either. But no one actually rang me these days. 

Except apparently in the middle of the night at around 2am. I swore and rolled out of bed, stumbled down the stairs and slumped into a chair in the measly room that passed for “office”. 

“Hello?” 

The connection was bad. “Ell..” I heard.

“Who is it?”

“...s me...ly” 

“Lily?” 

“Sor...sho..t...call...u...am...trob,” the voice came out cracking and I leaned closer. 

“Lily? Lils, is that you?” 

“Yes, Sev, plea-” there was a loud thump and a crack.

“Bitch,” the word sounded clear in the distance and I paled.

“Lily, hold, on, I’m coming!”

I got dressed faster than I deemed possible. I scrambled for socks and a cloak and then I was already apparating. It wasn’t possible to breach the wards around Potter’s mansion but I got close enough, then I was running through the woods, the light on the tip of my wand illuminating the way. I don’t know how I made it up to the manor, I don’t remember anything about the route, thinking back to it. All I know is my heart was beating in my throat as I climbed the hill to where the manor stood. 

The door was slightly open and there wasn’t a house-elf in sight. I wondered idly if James Potter sent them away when he was busy beating his wife or if he simply didn’t care what they saw. I didn’t even know where to look, I just ran through the house, my wand out and desperately listening for any sound that would give away where she might be. But the house was quiet. It was too quiet. I swung myself past a corner and into the living room.

It was trashed. I could see a curtain hanging only by its last thread, ripped off. The Persian, of course it was Persian, rug was covered in shards of glass and something else. I stepped forward, I thought I could see something lying in the darkness.

“Lily?” I asked quietly.

No one answered and the...something...on the floor remained still. Too still. I couldn’t see the slight rising and falling that goes hand in hand with breathing. “Lily, is that you?”

I took another step and that’s when it hit me. No, not an intelligent thought. If I had to guess, I’d say a candlestick with a wide base maybe or a frying pan, square in the back of my head. Then all I saw was a swirling darkness charging right at me.

* * *

My head ached something vicious when I came to and I think the rest of it won’t be too much of a surprise to you. That’s the part where I slowly started feeling around and realized I was lying in something quite sticky. It also had a particular stench that reminded me of metal. Metal but something else too. If some angry gnome hadn’t been using my head for his anvil, I could have figured it out but alas, I had trouble sticking to one coherent thought. I opened my eyes to see what it was that I was smelling, and saw the unmistakable single eye of Mad-Eye Moody staring down at me with a look that said “You are in deep shit now”.

It wasn’t shit though, that I was in, strictly speaking. It was a pool of slowly coagulating blood. And as I raised my head to look around I got a pretty good idea of who the blood belonged to. James Potter was almost unrecognizable due to the amount of blows to his face, but he was wearing the right ring and that explained Moody's reaction. As far as he was concerned, I had just been caught literally red handed (due to all the blood) next to the dead body of Albus Dumbledore’s golden boy. 

Alastor Moody didn’t care too much for James Potter, for all his bad qualities, he at least picked his favorites on the basis of if they were capable of intelligent thought, but he knew how important James Potter was for the fight against Voldemort’s growing influence. He was also Dumbledore’s man and he didn’t much like when Dumbledore’s plans were hindered. Like when someone whacked his money man. And by the look in Moody’s eyes, he was very confident about who exactly had been doing the whacking in this case. 

I felt the soft throbbing at the back of my head that indicated I had been hit and slowly lowered myself back onto the floor. For the first time in a while, I found myself wishing that whoever hit me had done it with a bit more force. Death was certainly preferable to what was coming next.

Now, you’d think that a magical murder investigation would make use of all the interesting magical stuff they have to find out the truth. After all, you’ve got your truth potions, your pensieves and if all other things fail, your torture curses. (As long as you don’t use that one that is illegal and you leave no marks...there isn’t a lot that the auror department can’t swipe under the rug). 

Well, you’d be wrong. Moody started by doing the old fashioned grilling as soon as they got me back to their offices. Him and that pinhead, Dawlish. Didn’t know much about him and the little I did know, I didn’t like at all. I sat there for hours and hours answering questions about why I was at the house and what I was doing during the time of the murder. I answered honestly that I’d gone there to see Lily and someone had hit me over the head. Over the course, it became very clear that the aurors had a different theory in mind. They thought I had gone over there and I had fought with James. I had attacked him and I had bludgeoned him to death in a jealous rage. 

I didn’t agree with their theory. I argued against it, I tried to tell them about the blow to the head.

Moody just stared at me, his look blank. “There was no evidence of a blow to your head,” he replied. 

Then he pulled out the candlestick. It was large and heavy and it had the most pristine set of bloody prints on it. I didn’t have to be a fingerprint expert, the prints were so clear any idiot with a magnifying glass could tell they were mine. I shrugged. “Maybe the murderer pressed the candlestick into my hand to put my prints on it?”

“You think so, huh?” Moody asked. “And how would they know you’d be coming over in the middle of the night?”

“I don’t know. But Lily called me. They must have heard that. Hell, maybe Lily told them. I don’t know.” I rubbed my temples, trying to focus. 

Dawlish stared at me. Then he reached out and I felt the impact before I even realized what he’d done. My head hit the edge of the table and I cried out. “What the fuck?”

Dawlish held me down. “I’m tired of your bullshit, Snape. The aurors have had an eye on you since Hogwarts. You were always trouble. And you never liked James Potter. But you always had eyes for Lily. You’re really expecting me to believe that despite all evidence to the contrary, you didn’t kill him?” He slammed my head down again and then let me go.

I wiped the blood off against my shoulder (that was miraculously clear of Potter’s blood). Then I glanced at Moody. “This legal now in the auror department?” 

Moody shrugged. “For special cases. But it would save us all a lot of trouble and a lot of time if you just owned up to what you did.” 

“And if I don’t, you’re gonna slap me around some more?” I snarled.

Moody shrugged. “Sounds good enough for now!”

He stayed true to his word. They did slap me around some more until I did spill some more. I told them Lily had hired me and that I had seen her bruises. They listened like they actually believed me. Then Dawlish left. He came back a few seconds later with someone else in tow. The widow Potter herself. And fuck, was that a meeting.

First she slapped me so hard I thought my jaw must have flown clear off from the force. 

“How could you?” she demanded, those eyes full of earnest anger. “How could you do this to me? I told you I was happy with him. I chose him. Why couldn’t you just accept that?” 

That’s when I knew I was in deep shit, of course. Not the kind that I could easily make jokes about either, now that it was finally feeling real. Especially since the only intelligent thing I could do was stare back at her, mouth agape. She was dressed up like a widow, black dress and black veil and perfect makeup. 

“Lily, I-” she never let me finish.

“No, I don’t want to hear it! I’ve told them the truth about how angry you got when you found out he’d cheated on me! I can’t lie for you. Not after what you did!”

“Lily, I didn’t-” I tried again.

“You...You brute! You made my child an orphan. I...I don’t want to hear what you have to say! I never ever want anything from you again. I…” Lily took a breath, “I hope you rot in hell, Snape.” 

She turned away. “I’m sorry, I can’t do this!” The last words were directed at Moody who led her out.

Dawlish sent me a disgusted glare, as they escorted her out. “Now of all times, when she’s with child, you leave her without a husband?” he spat, “Disgusting!” 

That wasn’t enough though. I might have been dumbstruck, after Lily turned around and betrayed me again, but I wasn’t about to give up just yet. She might have only said what she said to save face. After all, what did I expect, that she’d tell the world the whole truth? No, this was the last bit of indignity that she could spare. But unfortunately for her, the Potter name was not something I could afford to keep from being tarnished at my expense. After that I came clean. I told them everything and they listened as if they actually cared about the words.

They listened to me talk about being asked to follow James Potter and that he was having an affair with Jewel and that I had gone to the club to follow her. And that she had called me that night and that’s why I was at the Potters’ house. Merlin, they almost looked like they believed me. That should have been my first indication. Moody never listened to me. And then he leaned forward again, friendly.

“There is just one little problem with your story,” he began. “Potter never had an affair. He wasn’t at the club on Friday.”

“What? I was there, I saw him find the body!” I argued.

Moody shook his head. “He was at a meeting.” He didn’t need to specify what type of meeting. An order one. Which meant he had witnesses. It didn’t make sense. It couldn’t make sense. But I knew I was done for. 

I could say whatever I wanted and it wouldn’t have mattered. Lily might have been a muggleborn, but she was also bearing the only heir to the Potter family and now that the cat was out of the bag, no one would give a good god damn about what I had to say. And if Potter had never been to the club, then there was no way any part of my story made sense. If they believed Lily. And they were going to believe Lily over me.

But you don’t get to stay in the private eye business without getting to know at least one decent lawyer who doesn’t make you pay through the nose. There were a lot of reasons not to like Hermione Granger, attorney-at-law. She was loud, she was bushy-haired and with front teeth that made her sort of beaverish. She always had a cause like “Free the house-elves” or “Werewolves deserve equal rights too”. And she was also an idealist, which meant when someone had been slapped about by the aurors, she got them out with only a symbolic fee, just to make a point. Mad-Eye wasn’t happy to see me go, for sure, but that gal had a set of lungs on her and the last thing he needed was to be wrapped up in lawsuits until he died of old age. An hour after I requested representation by her, I was out on the street.

* * *

Something was nagging me from my interrogation. Something about the pictures of poor Josie Daniels. I went back to my office to find that the aurors had practically tore through it, followed by my landlady leaving a rather snippy note about keeping our living spaces clean and tidy. I did wonder if it was worth bringing up, that I could hardly be blamed for any mess, considering the bastards had torn my door damn near off its hinges, but then wrote it off as a lost cause. Rent was truly the last thing I needed to focus on.

My pensive was still in its place, although a large chunk of rock missing from one edge suggested someone had tipped it over at one point. Still, I looked in my bankbook and decided that it was worth the risk. I extracted the memory and got to work.

That smell was the first thing that hit me and this time I connected the dots. It was the same feeling of burning in my nostrils - fainter, but recognizable. And the same thing I had noted at Potter manor. I frowned and then carefully circled the body, trying to see more than I had seen on that day. She was there on the floor - wig, dress, everything. Potter was banging at the door. Strangled, which was already strange. All of these murders had been. They were...muggle in nature. No killing curses - a whack over the head for me, multiple blows to the head for Potter, something around the windpipe for her. I circled the body once more and then I saw the marks. Thin lines on the wood. I couldn’t examine them too close because I hadn’t at the crime scene, but they looked like scuff marks. 

No, not scuff. Drag. Someone had dragged the body into the room. And that smell. I went into the other memory to be sure and this time I saw that more clearly. I saw James Potter dead on the floor, I saw the candlestick and the pool of blood. And I felt the smell in my nostrils. _Stasis_. I scrambled out of the memory and began pulling mother’s old books from the shelves until I found the right one. A stasis spell was easy, the issue was that it didn’t last long enough. Usually not long enough. But a potion...I lay the book on the table, tracing the ingredients. A note that it would last for hours but with the caveat of a nasty smell. But if someone were to add copious amounts of perfume to the scene…well, the smell wasn’t that familiar and potions like that evaporated quickly, only leaving the effect behind. 

_She danced real clumsy that last night. I asked her if she was in love or something, never seen Jewel that distracted._

That’s what the girl at the club had said. Except what if she wasn’t distracted. What if it wasn’t her at all on the stage that last night. I had never seen Josie dance before. I just assumed the standard at the club had fallen. But I had also made the mistake of forgetting that I was dealing with wizards. All these muggle murder methods had fooled Moody into thinking I did it and had fooled me into thinking that I was playing by regular rules. That they were playing by regular rules. I shuffled through my drawers and pulled up a faded picture of Lily I kept there. I had to go talk to Mundungus. 

Mundungus Fletcher was one of those characters no one ever wanted to have anything to do with, but somehow no one ever escaped him. He had never held a proper job since graduating Hogwarts but he always had just enough money not to feel the need to get one either. Usually he was lurking around Knockturn Alley, not directly on the street. Which should say something about his character, that he was too shady for Knockturn Alley. Yet he had the fortunate upside of not giving a damn about politics or rivals. All he cared about were pretty shiny coins.

But he was always there and unlike pretty girls in the club, Mundungus talked for the promise of cheap beer and a handful of knuts. He didn’t like to snitch on his clients. Not until I slipped over another ten knuts. Then he sighed, like what he was about to do was breaking his heart, and nodded.

“Go on then, ask your questions!” 

“Anyone bought polyjuice and stasis potions off of you recently?”

“You want stasis, use your wand. And polyjuice is restricted.”

“What am I? An idiot? If it was legal stuff, I’d be questioning the apothecarist. Do you know these potions or not?”

Mundungus took a sip of his beer. “Maybe I know it. Maybe someone’s bought it.” 

“Who?” I asked.

“I am not gonna snitch on all of my clients. Not for knuts. Be more specific,” he replied, grinning as if that was a really smart thing to say.

I rolled my eyes. “Any women among the buyers?”

The way he reacted was answer enough. For a petty thief he was an incredibly inept liar. Still, he only glared meaningfully at the small pile of knuts.

I rolled my eyes, then dug around in my pockets and dumped a sickle on the pile. “What woman?”

“I cannot say. But if you were to show me any women that I might recognize, I could be persuaded to indicate so.” Again that grin that I’m sure he thought was clever but that made me want to put a fist through his face. 

But even in bars bordering the Knockturn Alley, in fact especially in bars bordering the Knockturn Alley, the auror presence was damn near equal to the presence of normal people. I couldn’t just put a wand to his throat, especially when Moody was probably begging for a reason, any reason, to haul me back in. 

It was truly my last sickle that I went fishing for, wondering how I’d describe Lily to him, when I pulled up the piece of newspaper I had pocketed from the library. I smoothed it out on the table, slid the sickle over and tapped Lily. “This her?”

Mundungus took himself a good while to examine her, then quickly pocketed all the coins and took another sip of beer. “Nah, that ain’t her. Never seen the lady. Her though,” he tapped, “Her I know. Bit of a firebrand too. When I tried to check if she was a cop, nearly bit my head off. But made no complaints about the price though. Should have charged her more!” he laughed. “Oh well, too late now.”

He stared at me expectantly, waiting to see if I had any more questions, but I was suddenly remembering something else I’d overlooked. What was the other thing Jessie had said? _Was a real bombshell. You’d think she could keep her man interested. Instead he went to find a near identical lover for himself._

Identical. Lily and Josie were by no stretch of the imagination identical. But...I stared at Regina Travers. Blonde and pretty. If I squinted just right, I could see it all clearly now.

* * *

I don’t know how I made my way to the Travers manor. I can’t remember the trip at all. It was as if I was in a daze until I made it up to the back door. Didn’t even think why I was doing it, before I was already pushing inside and found myself in her kitchen. When Regina Travers looked at me and hesitated, when she didn’t immediately scream or call for her husband, I knew I was right. She was clutching a pretty kitchen knife with a jade hilt and staring at me like I was a ghost. 

“What are you doing here?” Regina whispered. 

“You killed Josie,” I replied. 

She didn’t deny it. She said nothing. I took a step closer. “You went to that club and choked her to death.” 

“She was sleeping with my husband,” Regina didn’t sound like a firebrand right then. She sounded hoarse and scared. But her fingers gripped the hilt of the knife tighter.

“And then what? You went to your friend to help cover it up?” I reached out and took the knife from her hand. She tried to pull it back and it slashed my hand but she was too startled and I wrenched it out easily, holding it between my bleeding fingers.

“Go away,” she whispered, her eyes darting to the block with three more knives. Wondering, if she could reach it.

“You framed me,” I pushed, somehow invigorated by the fact that this pureblood was so scared of me, that I held the knife and she had nothing. “Was it your idea or hers?”

“She didn’t say she was going to kill him. She just...she just said I had to play her husband. And then she’d fix it for me. I couldn’t...I couldn’t…” she stammered and finally the cracks I had blinded myself to, shone through. All of the pieces fell into place and I could no longer deny it.

She had properly trapped me. I could see it now. She had planned it from the beginning. Lily always had a way with men. That’s why Potter kept following her around in Hogwarts. And she never really discouraged it. Back then I thought I was just being jealous. I tried to force it out of my mind and when I did mention it, she made fun of me. But now I knew. Lily had set the whole thing up and I had walked right in. She’d seen an opportunity to get rid of her husband. With the help of polyjuice and one damn fool who had never gotten over his schoolboy crush. And she’d succeeded too. Potter was dead and I was the one they’d set up for it.

I don’t know how I made it out of the Travers manor. I just left Regina Travers standing there and left. Then I walked around aimlessly for what felt like hours. It was dark when I finally stopped in front of Spinner’s End. And only then did I even realize I was still holding the knife. 

There were letters on the stoop. They’d set me a court date and the lawyer had sent a letter too, suggesting we meet up. I picked it up and just stared at it. What was she going to do, convince the entire Wizengamot that I, Severus Snape, Voldemort’s reject, was innocent? Lily was going to take the stand, cry a few tears and the whole room was hers. 

I threw the letters in the fireplace and poured myself the final firewhiskey. Then I picked up a handful of floo powder and made a call. 

“Moody? It is your lucky day, I’m ready to confess. I just have some requirements!”

* * *

She came in the middle of the night. Alone and dressed in black. I wouldn’t have even seen her coming if I hadn’t set up the surveillance spells to catch her coming. She paused in the living room, then stepped into the office. She didn’t turn the light on, but I could tell it was her. And I could see the knife in her hand, taken from my kitchen, jade glistening in the moonlight. 

For a moment she just stared at me in the darkness. Then she raised the knife and sort of pointed it at me, as if taking courage for the blow. I flicked on the light on the table and she almost jumped, as her face was illuminated. “Why the muggle weapons, Lils?” 

She stared at me, her lips pressed together in a thin line. Then she took a single step forward. The knife was still pointed at me but she was too far to stab. “Because wizards aren’t prepared for them. My James never saw it coming. The rest of the purebloods can pretend they are noble and they don’t discriminate. Yet the moment Moody saw muggle methods of murder, he immediately thought of you, a halfblood.”

Lily pushed the veil back and looked at me. And for the first time in a very long while, I thought I saw the real Lily. The one behind all the masks and lies. The way she used to be when we lay in the field, counting the stars and dreaming of getting out of Cokeworth for good. I wondered idly if James Potter had ever seen her that way. 

She lowered the knife then and indicated at a chair. “May I sit?” 

“Sure.” 

“So, what is the plan? You have something recording me or are you relying on your memories? You’ll get me to say that I set you up to kill James and then what? Do you really think they’ll believe you?” She didn’t sound devious anymore. Or manipulative. She sounded...tired.

I held out my case of cigarettes for her and she took one. “What other choice do I have? You set me up good, Lils. And you wouldn’t be here trying to kill me if you weren’t scared.” 

“Come on, you know they’ll never believe you. Because I might be a mudblood but I’m also Potter’s widow. I’m carrying his baby. They’ll want to believe me. So the status quo would live on,” she argued but I don’t think she even believed those words any longer.

It didn’t matter anyway. We both knew that now that I had figured out the truth, I wasn’t going to go down so easy. “So what do you suggest that I do? Just sit back and watch you set me up?”

“What else do you have? Pensive memories? You know that Wizengamot still hasn’t agreed to accept them as evidence. Too much chance of tampering.” She reached out and touched my hand. “Sev, you don’t have a choice. They don’t believe you. Moody doesn’t believe you. He and Albus, they’ll see you go down for this. I’ll play the grieving widow and they’ll be falling over themselves trying to get you to Azkaban.” She paused, “Or...or you could agree to take the rap. For me. And I’ll testify for you. I’ll tell them James beat me. You’ll be convicted but for the lesser crime. You’ll do time in Azkaban. And when you get out, maybe in as little as five years, you’ll still have a future!” 

I shook my head. “Just like that, huh? A future? As the man who killed James Potter? And what of the status quo? Do you have any reason to believe they’ll want you calling their hero a wife beater? That they won’t shut you up? And poor Josie? What motive absolves me there?”

“We could frame James for that, we could say he-” 

“You can’t be that dumb, Lils. And you can’t play me anymore.” I nodded at the knife in her hand. “Besides, if you thought I’d take the deal, then why did you come here with a knife?” 

She changed again, her eyes growing colder and harder. I was wrong, she was not the same little girl anymore. My Lily was dead and instead of her was only a cold empty shell. “You talked to Regina. You called Moody. He wants to ask about Regina now. He doesn’t think you killed Josie.”

“And what, you were going to stab me and make sure the case is closed?” I stood up. “What was your story? That I attacked you?” I walked around the table and up to her. “That I tried to force you into something? You had to defend yourself?” 

I leaned in so close that I could smell her perfume again and my hand closed around the knife in her hand. “I didn’t just send Moody after Regina. I tipped him off about that polyjuice potion she bought from Mundungus. I doubt he’ll be able to hold out for too long. They’ll know Regina was in on Josie’s murder and even Moody won’t buy that Regina was working with me. He’ll dig deeper.”

“Then Regina will go down for it,” her voice was so cold when she said it. She didn’t care. Not even for her. Not even for the woman who had helped kill her husband for her. “She’ll go down for Josie’s and you’ll be convicted for my husbands.” 

“Yeah, maybe,” I agreed, “But you messed up. _You_ came to me. I guess to frame a suicide. And that little show in the auror’s office. You weren’t scared, you were angry. Like someone considering to...take revenge.” I breathed in her air. “And once they get Regina talking, how long do you think she’ll hold out? Will she take the fall for you, once she realizes that you took a knife from her kitchen to kill me?” 

Lily gasped and looked down. She hadn’t seen it in the dark because she had no reason to fumble around. She picked the meanest one in the block. The one I’d stolen from Regina earlier in the day. I smiled. “You could of course clean up after yourself, try to hide your tracks. If the aurors don’t get here fast. If you aren’t still here when they storm in.” The crack of apparation echoed. Moody was arriving. I had, after all, called him and promised to confess it all. 

Lily paled. She tried to pull away but I held her hand tight. “Oh, and what did you say about pensive memories? Unfortunately not admissible in court. You see, you’re right, I can’t get you for the other two deaths but I can get you for mine!” Then I plunged the knife into my chest.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the Snape Big Bang 2019 and suchdeliberatedisguises made this absolutely gorgeous piece of art for it!
> 
> https://suchdeliberatedisguises.tumblr.com/post/616249579280760832/my-art-for-a-kiss-so-sweet-and-deadly-by-arhtea


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